Karen#1
Well-known member
[Hubbard and AG J. Howard McGrath, circa 1950]
As part of our ongoing look back at the beginnings of the Dianetics and Scientology evolution, we didn’t want May to run out without remembering what L. Ron Hubbard was up to 75 years ago this month.
We’ve been watching how things unfolded 75 years ago in 1951, as Hubbard’s early success with Dianetics had begun to sour. In April, Ron’s second wife Sara Northrup had begun to exact some revenge after his failed attempt to kidnap her and to get her committed. She revealed in a court document that not only had Ron tried to kidnap her, but he had made off with their infant daughter, Alexis.
Last time, we showed you the bizarre letter that Ron wrote from Cuba, where he had taken the baby. He then relocated to Wichita with the help of a wealthy oil man, Don Purcell.
Then, on May 15, Ron wrote an absolutely unhinged letter to J. Howard McGrath, the US Attorney General, trying to turn in Sara and a lot of others as current or former Communists who had attacked Ron with some pretty bizarre methods.
We’re posting the entire letter here. As Russell Miller said in Bare-Faced Messiah, the letter was beyond the pale, even by Ron’s standards…
Here it is in its entirety. Soak up its details, and imagine that anyone ever took this man seriously, then or later.
The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
275 MORRIS AVENUE
P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH 3-2951
211 W. Douglas St.
Wichita, Kansas
May 14, 1951
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:
You will find that I have reported some of these matters to the FBI in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. before but this is getting to a point where the mere delivery of facts into files is pointless.
It is more than a belief on my part that the Communist Party or members of the Communist Party have in the past year wiped out a half a million operation for me, have cost me my health and have considerably retarded material of interest to the United States Government.
I am, basically, a scientist in the field of atomic and molecular phenomena. At least, that was my course in college. I followed this into the fields of human thought, identified an energy and produced through twenty years of research, a science of thought known popularly as dianetics.
Although this story starts earlier, when I left the Navy in which I served as an officer during the war, I found myself associated with a woman known as Sara Elizabeth Northrup. I met her in Pasadena in late 1945. She evinced considerable interest in my scientific researches.
In 1949, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I formed an organization known as the American Institute of Advanced Therapy. Miss Northrup, whom I believed to by my wife, having married her and then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed her to be my wife in common law, was instrumental in breaking up this organization. In 1950 I wrote a book called DIANETICS and formed the HUBBARD DIANETIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION in New Jersey.
From the first this organization, quite unlike my naval commands, was a source of great turbulence to me. Strange things were done for which I had no accounting. Orders were rarely carried out. Research was held to zero. Funds were spent in unproductive ways.
In August of that year I had reason to believe my wife was unfaithful and went to California. I was afraid of publicity and did nothing about this. By October, things
[page 2]
had come to such a pass in terms of organizational enturbulence that C. Parker Morgan, a member of the Foundation board of trustees told me he believed subversion was taking place. He asked the FBI to make an investigation. I know nothing further of this investigation. However, investigating on my own, I found that the publisher of the book, Arthur Ceppos, Hermitage House, was failing to distribute the book and was actually upsetting the organization by invalidating me and the science. I challenged Ceppos with this and forced him to resign from the board of trustees of the Foundation. At this time I learned also that Ceppos was “formerly” a member of the Communist Party. Resigning with Ceppos and hand in glove with him, evidently, was J.A. Winter, MD, medical director of the Foundation. I discovered then that Winter was a psycho-neurotic discharged officer of the US Army Medical Corps and that Winter seemed to have Communist connections. I was not alert still to any belief that this strange upset in the organization was Communist inspired.
In early October my alleged wife, who a few months later would be claiming we were not married, caused me to make out a will to her via attorney Milt Davis of Los Angeles, leaving her shares in the copyrights and Foundations. I returned to Rahway New Jersey and in late October, while asleep in my home, was slugged. I had no proof of this and so I wisely or unwisely sheered away from publicity for something for which I had no witnesses and tried to carry on. However I was thereafter in poor health.
I returned to Los Angeles. On my first day in town Sara Northrup left our baby in a car and I was arrested for it. I could never understand why the police insisted it was I, but it is a matter of court record that the act was done by Sara.
On December the 5th, while asleep in my apartment, on North Rossmore in Los Angeles I was again attacked and knocked out. When I woke I debated considerably going to the police but was again afraid of publicity for again I did not know who might have done this. It never occured to me to suspect that my wife had any part in this.
I had become so ill by January 1st and was so long overdue in writing my second book that I went to Palm Springs. I returned from Palm Springs in late February to find my wife apparently ill, in bad mental condition, and my baby more or less forgotten in a back room of the Los Angeles Foundation. I instantly took steps, what steps I could, to give my wife help. She seemed to recover.
[page 3]
I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o’clock in the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce “coronary thrombosis” and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current. This is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara.
Further, earlier in the week I had found letters in a “love nest” she had had with a Miles Hollister, an employee of the Foundation. These letters contained, with their love language, also enormous amounts of data on the Foundation and my activities. Further there was a telegram which came from Hollister containing the phrase, “Lombardo should live so long” Lombardo being a name she sometimes called me.
I had been convinced by these letters she had been unfaithful but I was too ill to do anything active. I forgave her and tried to get her into better shape. But on Saturday Feb 25 she flew to San Francisco and my general manager, Jack Maloney in New Jersey, received a phone call from her and Miles Hollister and a psychiatrist named Meyer Zelig in San Francisco that I had gone insane and that they needed money to incarcerate me quickly.
I learned of this quickly by phone from New Jersey and my orders from my eastern Foundation were to get out. I went back to the apartment that night however and found my “wife” had returned but seemed drugged. I found two strange men watching the apartment. I got her out, she consenting, and took her to Palm Springs. Hollister instantly had warrants issued for my arrest for “abducting” my wife and gave the Beverly Hills police a false address for himself. Further, I had put my baby safely in a nursing home and Hollister issued a compalint against me in Los Angeles for kidnapping my own baby. I tried to get Sara out of California, knowing her to be under terrific duress of some kind. She however would not further accompany me than the Arizona border. I have her signed statement, requested of her by me before the border guard that she was under her own power and was with me by full consent. At the moment she demanded to go back I could not deter her naturally without using force and so I let her go.
I went east. My baby was delivered to me there. The child was ill and I took her south to get her some sunshine. I wrote my second book in Havana. I returned here to Wichita.
Meanwhile I was able to integrate this matter and obtained more data from friends. There are many witnesses to these things, Frank Dessler, A.E. van Vogt, Mrs. Fay Clauson,
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Richard de Mille, and others.
Sara was associating exclusively and using her position to support a group consisting of Miles Hollister, Gene Benton, (an alias, his real name being Weinberger), Peggy Benton, Roger Starr, Lyn Hite, Henry Hunter, Marge Hunter and Gregory Hemmingway. In the east she was closely and exclusively associated with Dr. Winter, Arthur Ceppos and a Nancy Roodenburg. Using a Foundation position as Executive vice-president, she provided this group with funds. Handling my own accounts she neglected to pay many debts. She was closely connected as well with Hal Moon, a “pastor” in Monrovia or some such town in California. Also she was associated, as a part of this group, with Marc Lawrence, the actor, and via Benton, Stan Kenton, the orchestra leader seems also associated with this group and also with a Will Graff or Graph. Also connected here is Edward Kuhl of Universal Pictures but in what way I am not certain.
Gene and Peggy Benton confessed to our general manager that they had been members of the Young Communists. Henry Hunter and Marge Hunter are alleged to have been connected with Communism. Marc Lawrence, very active in this group, is supposed to have been (admitted in the House to have been) a member of the Communist Party. Hollister stated to me that he had been a member of the Young Communists and is associated with Dr. Werner Wolfe of Bard College.
In November the Medical Director of the Foundation Dr. Rowland Walker died very suddenly, in Winter’s House, of “coronary thrombosis”, after a siege of terrible nerves. In late January or early February, an instructor of the Los Angeles Foundation, on the verge of important research data, was shot to death by his wife who then committed suicide — out of which Hollister and Benton seemed to have attempted to make anti-dianetic publicity. Earlier, in New York, a young patient, after an interview with Gene Benton committed suicide and an effort had been made to publicize.
The group above named has produced remarkable tension in our organization so that the organization has collapsed and another has had to be set up to replace it. Their removal from dianetics has been attended by a most remarkable smear campaign in California.
In February in Chicago I took tests at the Chicago Psychological Institute to guarantee the fact that I am sane. This talk of insanity and other matters in the press have behind them a remarkable clause in the “divorce” petition leveled by Sara “Hubbard” — a receivership for the Foundation and turning it all over to her. She was aware of..
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Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's year from hell: His unhinged letter to the US Atty General
As part of our ongoing look back at the beginnings of the Dianetics and Scientology evolution, we didn’t want May to run out without remembering what L.
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